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suraj.sun tips news that the Obama administration announced today plans to free up roughly 500MHz of the wireless spectrum for commercial broadband. From the Washington Post:
"The commitment backs a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission to auction off broadcasters' and government spectrum to commercial carriers that envision their networks running home appliances, automobile applications, tablet computers and other wireless devices. White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said in a speech outlining the president's plan that freeing up more spectrum will spur economic growth through auctions of the airwaves and investment in wireless networks and technology. ... The FCC has proposed that 280 megahertz of spectrum come from broadcasters and other sources, 120 of which would come from broadcasters. The other 220 megahertz would come from the federal government's holdings managed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration."

It doesn't give any specifications about what frequency ranges. 500 Mhz is a lot, if it starts at 0Hz, it's pretty much priceless... if it starts at 60Ghz... not worth very much at all.

As far as freeing it up.... if it's for commercial use, instead of for networking peer to peer, what good is it for any of us? The monopolies will buy it up, and fight over it, and bill us with a profit margin along the way, while we get crap.

Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use, and we can do a lot to fix the last mile problem.

It doesn't give any specifications about what frequency ranges. 500 Mhz is a lot, if it starts at 0Hz, it's pretty much priceless... if it starts at 60Ghz... not worth very much at all.

??? A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz. Or did your comment have to do with range and penetration into buildings? Or practicality of building transmitters & receivers?

It doesn't give any specifications about what frequency ranges. 500 Mhz is a lot, if it starts at 0Hz, it's pretty much priceless... if it starts at 60Ghz... not worth very much at all.

??? A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz. Or did your comment have to do with range and penetration into buildings? Or practicality of building transmitters & receivers?

??? A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz.

At ~2.5Ghz you hit the resonant frequency of water mollecules, and any signals you send through the lower atmosphere are guaranteed to be attenuated in a rather short distance. At 60GHz, you actually hit the resonant frequency of OXYGEN, which means the signal is going nowhere fast.

Nah, water doesn't really start to ruin your day until 24 GHz. Water doesn't do anything special at 2.5 GHz, regardless of the chorus of canard-wielding canaries who will claim that's why microwave ovens work there.

A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz.

Umm, you know that's not even remotely true, right?

The higher the frequency, the higher the potential data rate. However, the higher the frequency, the further apart the "channels" need to be to prevent them from interfering with each other. Also, different frequencies have different propagation/absorption characteristics.

So a 500MHz band could be extremely valuable or worthless depending on where in the band plan it is.

>>>The higher the frequency, the higher the potential data rate. However, the higher the frequency, the further apart the "channels" need to be to prevent them from interfering with each other.>>>

I'm curious where you got this info. 500 megahertz is 500 megahertz and carries the same amount of data regardless where you put it. That's why a TV channel, whether it's located at 50 Mhz or 1 Gigahertz, still carries the same amount of data (~19 Mbit/s). The shifting up or down makes no diffe

We should put a notch filter around these people who didn't pass electromag. We need a special place in/. for engineers. The capcha to get in would be to solve Maxwell's equations.
I'm relieved that apparently he didn't steal any of the ham bands. The way this country is going, we need our radios. If the internet wants to be free, it needs to get off the wired network controlled by government granted monopoly.

That's like saying 5 word per minute typist is just as good as a 60 wpm typist.

No, not at all. I won't bother responding in terms of your ridiculously bad analogy. I will just restate somewhat more clearly: if you have a 500mHz band in which to modulate, it does not matter what the base frequency is, the band can carry the same number of raw bits whether it is 0x10^9 - 0.5x10^9 or 6x10^9 - 6.5x10^9. (As another poster pointed out, issues of interference and penetration will affect the protocol overhead required in order to get correct bits through, thus there's some variance in the ne

As far as freeing it up.... if it's for commercial use, instead of for networking peer to peer, what good is it for any of us?

I don't know about you, but I LIKE having unlimited cell phone + data service for under $50/month. I certainly wouldn't depend on the availability of wifi hotspots for my phone service (at least without a fallback to cell towers).

I also like that the government is getting money for the spectrum and using them to provide services to all of us, rather than raising income taxes.

>>>I don't know about you, but I LIKE having unlimited cell phone + data service for under $50/month

And then there's me who doesn't use his cellphone at all. It's nice to have when my car breaks-down but given the choice between losing my cell and losing my free TV, I'd give up the cellphone. The TV gives me hours of free shows, movies, and weather/news updates. The cellphone gives me a 20 cent per minute bill.

Uh, the UHF spectrum is still being used mr ka9dqx (HAM operator?). Channels 14 to 51 are used for the TV I'm watching right now, and channels 52 to 83 were leased to police, fire, cellphone, wireless, and other services. So that's not available either.

If you are suggesting I should lose my UHF-TV then I strongly object. It would drop me from ~40 programs downto just 2 programs. If you thought the Tea Parties were radical, wait

>>>You have to realize that outside of NYC or LA, there is plenty of open spectrum

Not correct. The downsizing from 69 to 51 has made the spectrm so full that now TV stations are tripping-over one another. For example channel 11 in Baltimore is "colliding" with channel 11 in Scranton PA. It's creating reception problems for viewers in both markets. ----- Meanwhile over in Philadelphia channel 6 is having problems being seen (due to the low frequency) so they asked permission to move up to a

As much as I like the Internet, I don't like this. As a big time proponent of over the air broadcasting, I don't like the rumbles from the FCC about cutting their spectrum even further than it already has been. It serves an important purpose to the poorer people in this country who cannot afford subscription fees, plus allows for some live TV to continue to be available for people who choose to do without cable/satellite. Free over-the-air TV is an excellent compliment to Internet video, particularly for

One other feature of OTA that is little appreciated is the market fragmentation it causes. Which is good for endusers.

Media and broadcasting is inherently a business that tends toward monopolies, and we need whatever little diversity we can get by having OTA channels owned by some company other than the regional cableco or the national satellite company.

TV over the internet cannot be multicast, meaning a one-to-one stream has to be set up for each viewer. It's HUGELY inefficient. Over-the-air is a one-to-many system. Transmit it just once and that same bandwidth is used for every person watching.

So it's more efficient to put up giant transmitters and blast out a signal that can be accessed clearly from the fricking moon, across a mindbogglingly wide swath of the spectrum, than it is to only send the data to the people who are requesting it?

You're suggesting that the 6 hours per household per day of TV watching, across over 100 million households, is practical to do via TCP/IP, a dozen routers, and thousands of miles of cable, but not practical to do via one giant tower that lets them pluck it from the air?

Consider this: in the US the average household watches 6.8 hours of TV per day, and there are some 110 million households. That's 748 million hours of programming per day. We will say by some grace that it's concentrated on half of the day

Making a horribly implausible scenario does not prove your point, only your ignorance of how the internet actually works.

In reality, any such stream would be cached since you can amazingly enough cache things in real time. It'd be in fact, cached by each ISP as is done with any large content nowadays. Look up akamai. You'd end up with a tree of data propagation so the core servers might only need to send out data to a couple thousand destinations. Those send data to a couple thousand more destinations and t

So it's more efficient to put up giant transmitters and blast out a signal that can be accessed clearly from the fricking moon, across a mindbogglingly wide swath of the spectrum, than it is to only send the data to the people who are requesting it?

Of course it's more efficient, for most reasonable definitions of efficient. That's why broadcast stations were developed first, long before cable systems. You don't need giant transmitters, nor do you need to broadcast to the moon (though you CAN, if you want -

One of my local stations sends-out 5 channels in its assigned space. That's 1 program per 1.2 megahertz and it looks a heck of a lot better than hulu.com streaming via my DSL. Broadcast TV is very efficient, not wasteful. It sends approximately 10 channels per region at ~20 Mbit/s each. That's ~200 Mbit/s total audiovideo programming sent to millions of people. Free.

The same service by internet would require a major rewiring project, lots of manhou

Point made, poor phrasing on my part. Multicast does exist, don't get me wrong, but good luck getting any major ISPs in the US to support it. Remember they're all offering their own subscription video services--do you really think they'll let just anyone multicast video over "their" network without getting a cut?

So the FCC tells us to upgrade to HD Radios and then switches off the HD-FM band? Unlikely. Unless they are total assholes. Besides FM only represents 20 megahertz of the supposed 220 Mhz that broadcasters are supposed to give up.

One thing that I have found concerning about this and other articles on this topic is that they make no mention of what actual spectrum is on the chopping block to be reassigned. I understand that to most people it means nothing, but I'm relatively both curious (and a little wary) of what exactly they're giving up for this.
I guess it's the radio amateur in me that's terrified to lose spectrum (of course, it's not like they're going to be wanting any HF...but 10GHz? 1.2GHz? I think that spectrum might seem

I actually heard once that people with amateur radio licenses, if they can broadcast their callsign, such as in the SSID, are allowed to use the higher power outputs allowed to them than to those using simply the unlicensed spectrum. Has anyone else ever heard of this?

Yes, and you are correct. We could technically use wifi amplifiers to boost our 2.4GHz signal to a (frightening, costly, and horribly impractical) 1500 watts.
However, no encryption is allowed in that case, even HTTPS.

I actually heard once that people with amateur radio licenses, if they can broadcast their callsign, such as in the SSID, are allowed to use the higher power outputs allowed to them than to those using simply the unlicensed spectrum. Has anyone else ever heard of this?

The term you need to google for is HSMM.

There are many other limitations to FCC part 97 operations, way beyond the scope of a slashdot post. Its not as simple as "change your SSID and its all good".

I think you're mixing up a bunch of different things. It's true that amateur radio licenses can operate on different frequencies than the rest of us and can transmit at high power levels on those frequencies. Their call sign is assigned when they get their licence and they are required to broadcast it at regular intervals while transmitting (among other rules). This call sign has nothing whatsoever to do with WiFi ssids.

It bugs me that call signs are re-used. Olaf Pearson (I will not vouch for the spelling) was a friend of my fathers. He was actually employed, as a kid, in Marconi's workshop. His house in Mobile, Alabama had a room that might as well have been a radio museum when I met him some 35 or 40 years ago. He was absolutely ancient even then but it was a delight to watch him light up as he demonstrated a radio he'd built using a 5-gallon Leyden jar; the discharge of that oversized capacitor (just a burst of static, really) was used to send morse. (After a short demo, he let loose an ominous chuckle and said "We probably just knocked out TV and radio reception for a 5-mile radius!")

His call sign was W4NU; I still have one of his cards. Olaf is long since dead and someone else now has that call sign.

It always felt wrong to me that those early call signs weren't retired as the pioneers passed on.

I guess that TV broadcasters didn't give the government enough money.
I have a better idea! How about if a good sized chunk of that spectrum was made license free, like 2.4 and 5.8 ghz?
Why should we give up "public airwaves" to the Verizons of the world to sell back to us by the kilobyte at high prices with data caps, etc.
Look what's been done with the crumbs that the FCC has allowed us already!

So you probably don't know about public service and emergency communications that hams do. The chat is part of making sure our gear works when nothing else does like the 24 hour "Field Day" exercise that tens of thousands of hams took part in last weekend to simulate communication in emergency conditions when grid power is not available and communications lines are down.
Oh, and don't give me the, "It's not needed because we have cell phones" story. We had a tornado in my neighborhood and cell phones didn'

On parts of the East Coast, the broadcast spectrum is almost full; there's no more room in VHF-Hi or UHF for any stations (there's a bit of VHF-lo left, but VHF-Lo sucks for digital). Taking 20 channels out means a lot of people are going to lose TV. Who is it going to be? I suppose the Comcast-NBC merger will free up a few stations (if Comcast pulls NBC off the air), but even that's not enough.

I am not an Obama hater, but why is Obama doing this or at least getting credit for this? When I first read this story I thought "Isn't the legislative branch responsible for guiding what happens with the wireless spectrum?".

The FCC Website states "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent US government agency, directly responsible to Congress, and regulates interstate..."

Does Obama even have the authority to double the available broadband wireless spectrum?

I am not an Obama hater, but why is Obama doing this or at least getting credit for this?

Because its an administration plan.

When I first read this story I thought "Isn't the legislative branch responsible for guiding what happens with the wireless spectrum?".

The legislative branch is responsible for virtually everything that the Federal government has the power to do; often, it exercises its authority by setting broad policy goals and letting executive branch agencies (including so-called "independent" agen

A publicly available graph showing time against against frequency usage with coloured company bars over it. We'd see exactly what was going on, and it'd be scientifically educational and informative too.

How much are YOU getting charged to auction the spectrum off to the carriers? I don't get it. Especially since there actually is a lot of competition in the wireless market lately - it's worth noting that we're starting to see unlimited data plans on various 4G networks that rival the speeds and monthly costs of landline broadband.

Thats a big part of the problem... They are going to Auction it off.. The 700mzh spectrum they auctioned off 2 years ago is still not yet deployed... for the most part Carriers are Buying up spectrum to prevent competition.. What is needed in the US market is more lightly Licensed Spectrum like the 3.65-3.7 that the smaller companies can afford to use so that there is some competition... right now all the unlicensed band is consumed where there is any population density and the 3.65-3.7 is just too small to make much of a difference.. not to mention the license for it is broken.. As it only takes 1 person in a area to make the whole spectrum unusable and there is no recourse for anyone to take to get them to properly use the spectrum.

Also, kind of annoyed me Slashdot reported so well right up to the auction, then gave the results... then not one word about the billions of dollars in revenue the US collected from the auction, which was the whole reason I was following the story in the first place. Where the hell did the money go? Why isn't anyone following it??

$19.6 Billion is just too much money to just ignore and let go missing

No it isn't. The US Federal budget for last year was $3,518 Billion. The money from the sale accounted for just over 0.5% of it. The money didn't go missing, it just showed up as a line item in the federal income column, along with tax revenue. The total Federal income for 2009 was $2,105 Billion, so this accounted for just under 1% of the government's total income, which is too small to show up in anything but the most detailed breakdowns.

Nice point. But the story was big enough, regardless of the amount of money, that there should have been a follow up on it... those dollars... a "Where are they now?" piece would have made a nice epilogue.

So... is it just not possible to remove the "in all likelihood" part, and actually know, at least initially, were it went? I'd like to know... I don't understand the position of "it went somewhere... that's good enough for me."

>>>Why in hell would anyone want to tax banks? So you can pay higher fees for your account.

I think you oversimplify. If you tax the people directly then ALL the money comes from the people, but if you tax the corporations then only about half the money comes from the people (customer fees). The other half comes out of CEOs and other wealthy managers' pockets (i.e. they get paid lower salaries). So yes taxing the corporation is a better result for the average citizen.

As I keep telling people - there is only ONE wireless spectrum, but wired spectrum is limitless (just keep running more cables). Wireless is a limited resource and should not be squandered. Wired should be the preferred method of expansion of the internet. I can understand average people and politicians not understanding this, but engineers and technicians should be able to grasp it easily.

120 megahertz taken from broadcasters equals the loss of TV channels 31 to 51. Many stations would be forced

They are taking 120 megahertz from broadcasters, which is equivalent to subtracting 20 slots on the DTV spectrum (where each slot can hold 3-5 channels each). What a crock. I don't want to subscribe to Comcast. They charge $60 a month, plus $5 for each extra TV, plus 6% tax on top of that. AND their prices keep going up and up. (Basically 2.5 times more than what I paid in 2000.)

And the government used taxpayer money - spending almost 1 billion to hand-out subsidzed converter boxes and eduation program

Anonymous Coward wrote:Well, when the government GAVE away, for free, those frequencies to networks

Say what? -1 Wrong. Every local station PAYS for their frequency. The FCC collects over a billion dollars each year from TV broadcasters, plus requiring broadcasters to SERVE the public by providing news, weather, emergency and government announcements for Free (rather than charge $50 a month like cellphone providers).

How much are YOU getting charged to auction the spectrum off to the carriers? I don't get it.

Where do you think the carriers get the money to participate in these auctions?

Personally I think the US couldn't be going faster in the wrong direction. Rather then allowing another spectrum to be bough up the US Govt should be selecting a single 4G spectrum and forcing all Telco's to use that one spectrum. Now before the Randroids come in with their "OMG Socialism" rants let me explain. This will create more

I'm sure the company they sell it to will continue the status quo and provide bare minimum to rural area's.

No, "wireless broadband" is code for mobile data plans. Considering how each increases in speed/bandwidth for cellphone technology have always come with decreases in range, rural areas are going to be the last to see this technology if they ever do.

If the government really wants rural residents upgraded from Narrowband dialup to Broadband, the quickest and cheapest answer is use the existing phone lines for DSL. (Or existing cable tv lines for internet.) There's no diffing required because the lines are already there. You might need to add a DSLAM or DOCSIS router to each city block (or equivalent), but that doesn't cost that much. The expense can be taken out of the Universal Service Fee charged each month.

There's no [digging] required because the lines are already there. If Congress mandated it, phone and cable TV customers could have nearly all rural residents on DSL or Cable broadband by the end of the year. - It might take a little longer for Farmer Bob living in Nowhere Idaho but it would still be faster than waiting for Farmer Bob to get a cell tower installed near his cattle ranch. AND it would get done quickly and cheaply.

This has absolutely nothing to do with how much you pay for communications services. (And I agree, it's way too much, though why any sane person even has Cable TV any more is a mystery.) It's just a reallocation of wireless resources. It might actually help your bill a little, by creating some competition.

If you want to do something besides whine, start agitating for the breakup of the big media monopolies.

If my brother was here he'd probably say he doesn't know how to get TV over the net, and it's "just easier" to flip channnels on the set like he's done the last ~50 years. OTHER people claim watching TV on a computer is not relaxing and they want to be able to watch with their wife & kids on the big screen. Basically they are paying for simplicity and convenience

Wrong context. I should have realized that most people would see the context as "Why pay for stuff you can get free online?" My context was "cable TV has gotten so outrageously expensive, sane people make do without it." Really, what you get for those hefty cable fees is the ability to watch stuff when it first comes out, without having to wait for the DVDs. I've been known to use pirated channels to get access to content that's still being sequestered. But even if bittorrent and sidereel went away tomorrow

And how much are they going to charge u's for that? I'm paying too much already for my internet, cable and phone. Thank's but no thank's. I assume this is for the people in rural area's that don't have any internet to speak of. I'm sure the company's they sell it to will continue the statu's quo and provide bare minimum to rural area's. No new's here move along.

These used to be TV channels. This is why we all switched to digital TV, to free up this spectrum. That process had always anticipated the spectrum would be used for wireless, cellular or broadband uses.

The process was started a good ten years ago, and signed into law in prior administrations, (yet in this all things to Chairman Mao world, Obama gets credit).

These frequencies are generally in the 700mhz band, below the 800 band used by some cell phones. These freqs have better building penetration and range than do the higher bands in the 2100mhz block often uses by cell carriers. Fewer towers cover larger areas, with better penetration. Its all good.

Especially in rural areas, the greater range makes sense.

But yes, you will pay for this spectrum AGAIN, after TV stations vacated it (did they get any money back?) the carriers will purchase the licenses, and eventually (don't hold your breath) put broadband and or cellular devices in this space, and charge you for the privileged of using it.

-1 Wrong. TV stations pay the FCC over 1 billion *each year* for their frequencies. They are also required to be free-of-charge (i.e. they can't chage you $50 a mont like a cell company, or $1 a month like TNT, USA, et cetera). Providing free service is costly - just ask UPN or WB or CW or NBC. The first two went bankrupt and CW/NBC are on the verge themselves.

(1) My reading of the article is that this is a NEW taking of spectrum - channels 32 to 51 will be removed and leased to cellphone companies. (2) The TV stations that lost channels 52 to 69 were given new spots, so they didn't lose anything. Some of the poorer "neighborhood" stations received financial handouts to convert from analog to digital but that's it.

Unfortunately "the public" means "the government". So "the government" will auction the spectrum off to the highest bidder among its corporate bedfellows, and the real public "ie you and me" will have 1) absolutely no say in it and b) have to fork up another tax or fee to use "the public" airwaves.

So "the government" is an alien and foreign dictatorship imposed on America, rather than a bunch of folks that We The People voted into office to represent the interests of We The People? Gosh, you learn something new every day!

The government is not "us" or "we". The government is a separate entity - a necessary evil to maintain peace, not something to love and worship. I certainly don't consider myself part of the government. For example I would never have fined myself $950 a year as punishment for not having hospital insurance. Only a separate entity would hatch such a stupid plan that is anti-choice.

I am so gratified to learn that "the government" was appointed by evil dictators, rather than selected by We The People to handle our interests! Why, the notion that every single one of the folks in Congress were appointed by evil dictators rather than selected by the majority of voters in his or her state or district explains everything, everything I say, about why America is in the grips of tyranny!

Or it could be that America gets the government it wants -- and deserves. Whatevah.

DSL or Cable is about $20 a month for ~250 gigabytes. Wireless is much, much, much more expensive for equivalent 250 GB service. So how is wireless "great" for rural reidents??? Hell even satellite internet would be a cheaper option.

I have a friend whose dad is stuck on dialup. I looked at wireless but it's beyond his budget (retired). I also looked at satellite - not available. Meanwhile he has perfectly good phone and cable lines running to his house which could be used for internet. The Co

The FCC has proposed that 280 megahertz of spectrum come from broadcasters and other sources, 120 of which would come from broadcasters. The other 220 megahertz would come from the federal government’s holdings managed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration."

They are saying that to make up the 500mhz of specturm that 280mhz of it will come from broadcasters and other sources and 220mhz will come from the government. Now of the previous 280mhz block, 120mhz of that will come from broadcasters.

It's a nice notion, but think about the spinup time for the industry Obama would have to build to tackle this problem. The fact is that only the oil companies have the technology in place to do this, he must rely on at least one of them to fix this in any sort of reasonable time frame (and time is of the essence... we can't wait a year or two for a federal effort, and we'd be lucky if the feds could do anything that quickly). He could pick a different oil company, though, and have BP pay one of its compe

[citation needed] on the supposed effectiveness of SWIFT in catching terrorists. I'm sure it'll be as effective at stopping terrorists as the ban on anonymous prepaid SIMs are effective at stopping terrorists from remote detonating bombs.

Although this version of the agreement seems much more reasonable than the previous - thanks to the European Parliament.